A fuel metering system, to function precisely, requires that the quantity of air aspirated be known, so as to be able to furnish a stoichiometric fuel/air mixture accordingly. Known fuel metering systems use a hot-wire air flow rate meter, operating on the constant-temperature principle. The output variable of a measuring device of this kind does not, however, have a linear relationship with the quantity of aspirated air. For the sake of further signal processing, it proves to be efficacious for such (non-linear) measuring devices to be followed by correction networks or linearizing elements. Linearizing circuit networks or layouts are already known in principle in the form of squaring circuits, for instance, or known in general as exponential circuits and exponential wave shaping circuits or networks. It is true that these known linearizing circuit networks or layouts are capable of producing satisfactory results; however, since there is only a limited degree of freedom with such circuits, compromises are necessary in terms of the precise conversion of the hot-wire air flow rate signal into a signal which is proportional to the quantity of air aspirated per unit of time.